I agree with this as well. It's why I wrote an exploration code to handle something like this. The way I use it, is it tracks which rooms a player has visited, and if they haven't been there before it wont show up on the map. So initially when you connect, your map is blank, but as you move around more and more, you can see the rooms you visited (if you want to see more of this, there's a mapper code in the pastebin that uses it). Not only is this a cool feature and kinda (I say kinda, because those who don't want to read room descs, wont, regardless of what you do) fixes your problem, but it also really helps someone get the lay of the land really quickly initially, and when they get to new areas.

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I was actually thinking about a system similar to what you're talking about, Davion. I was also going to create map objects with a slightly different (somewhat more useful) spin. You could buy a map object of some wilderness area, and as long as you had it on hand, the overhead ASCII map would draw the correct terrain, even if you'd never been there before. Of course, once you stopped using the map, the terrain would revert back to blank spaces, indicating that you don't really know what's there yet.

Edit: This would also make for an interesting new player skill, "cartography," which would allow a player to create map objects from his/her own memory (visited rooms), and sell them to those who need them.

@Davion, very cool, exactly what I was thinking.

@Deimos, I like this idea as well; in WoW a Hunter can "track beasts" or "track gold". This would be especially cool in a Sci-fi mud, like StarTrek where
your tricorder could find close minerals or scan for enemies. Either way I agree with Shasarak about the text vs graphics deal. There is something pure
about just text, but as others have stated, this isn't logical, just a nerdy preference.

That, actually, is my main gripe with maps, auto-exits, and all the other lazy-technologies that players have grown accustomed to using. :)

Old school games tended to have learning the layout of the game world, and being lost, as part of the game. How many remember drawing maps on paper while playing The Bard's Tale? Ultima III? Heck, even Everquest? How often did you write down quest givers' names and locations so you could find them again? Shops that sold special goods?

Once maps with little radar dots became the norm, players lost the ability to remember where anything was. More than that, developers lost the ability to actually make them feel lost! Excitement–. I'm sure some of you played Everquest when it came out. If you did, you remember what Nektulus Forest was like at night, and why dying there near dusk was such a horrible thing. No matter how dark the graphics are, having a radar map takes away that sense of fear of not knowing where you are.

So, back to text games. Taking away maps and auto-exit lines and such, of course players can try to skim to descriptions for exit names… but there's nothing saying you have to provide them. If you're standing outdoors, on a plain or in the woods, it's implied that you can walk in whatever direction you like unless something is blocking your path. Use that.


> look
You're standing in a vast ocean of tall grass and an occasional shrub. Trees seem absent here, perhaps the soil is too thin for them to grow, since it doesn't seem to be too arid. A small creature of some kind rustles in the grass to your left, but you can't see anything. There appear to be mountains on the northern horizon, and the dark smudge at their base might be a forest.
> go east
You're walking through tall grass, with nothing larger than a bush as far as the eye can see. There are mountains far away to the north, and perhaps a wood growing along the foothills. The ground looks soft and grass gives way to weeds and cattails to the east.
> go east
The ground here is soft and damp. There are cattail and other tall weeds growing out of the muck, and progress to the east seems difficult as the ground gives way to shallow pools with the occasional buzzing insect. Firmer ground supporting tall grasses lies in almost every other direction. You can catch a glimpse of what is probably a mountain range, far off to the north.
> go east
You are standing in knee-deep water. The mud sucks at your boots and makes each step difficult. Heading further east would require you to swim in the tepid, algae-covered water. Considering the clouds of midges and swishing sounds coming from the swamp, that might not be such a great idea. Firmer ground lies to the northwest, towards the far-away mountains.

At that point, you could make "east" an invalid exit, or perhaps require people to have a high enough swimming skill to head east. If you allow them to head east, I'd have the next description stop showing the mountains since they are now busy swimming and trying to navigate the "maze" of the swamp. Another step further in would also stop showing the "firmer ground" hints, thus giving people a chance to actually be lost. If you have a map, that chance can't exist.

Yes, you can choose to turn it off… yet the player will never feel lost because they know they can always turn it back on to get out of it. It's like having a hint book. Sure, you can try to play the game without using it, but you know you CAN open it up if you get stuck.

Some of my top players are blind, meaning they have to navigate without maps.

Out of curiousity (as this is something I've been thinking about recently), do you dislike ASCII graphics on the login screen as well?


I use something a bit like that for areas, and it's pretty nice - it allows me to award exp each time a player explores a new part of the world, unlock area-specific quests the first time they visit an area (rather than giving them a huge pile of quests up front), and the players can see an "explored %" value in their score.

I don't use it for hiding parts of the map, although the local map only shows line-of-sight details anyway.

Dungeons also have their own 'explored' map that shows which parts have been explored, but this is stored per-dungeon rather than per-player (the dungeon layout is reset when the last player leaves, and randomised when the first player enters after a reset).


Yeah, but it's one I've always hated (and still do), as I can never seem to remember my way around. Besides, increasing the learning curve of world navigation isn't exactly high on my TODO list :tongue:

Hmm, interesting question…. No, I don't think I mind that. The login screen is something that I kind of mentally compartmentalise as being distinct from the actual game. I guess it's a bit like the cover of a book: it's not actually partof the book, it's simply an OOC mechanism which helps me to locate the correct book and start reading it when it's sitting on the book-shelf.

Obviously blind players would hate ascii graphics anywhere!

In the same sort of way, I don't object to having a nice visual design on a website which contains the MUD's statistics and help-files; if it doesn't feel like part of the game, then it doesn't compromise it.

Again, I'm not suggesting that this makes sense. :smile: It's an emotional reaction, not a logical one.

Yeah, me too bro.

You should do field of vision (FoV) algorithms since you're doing a rogue-like. :)

It is using a FoV algorithm, which thankfully was written by someone else.

I'd be more likely to use this code to enhance my MUD. Make GUIs for editing game content. Make maps at varying levels, whether the nearby proximity, abstract maps of terrain (grasslands, cities, towns, mountains, etc), abstract maps of countries.. etc. Minigames.

So you mean "Blind" blind? That's pretty awesome! I don't know why I never thought about it before.
They would use some sort of braille keyboard or something? Like in the movie "Sneakers" where the hacker guy had one.
A mud would be the perfect game for someone without sight now that I think about it.

lawl. They use screen readers that recite what is printed on the screen very quickly.

I had a player once (who was blind) who claimed to not even own a monitor.

Yes. And, as you can imagine, screen-readers don't cope very well with trying to convert ascii graphics to speech.

Reading this, my first thought is that it would be invaluable if you had the time, to write up guidelines based on your experience, for how to best cater for blind players.


Only if it is done badly. Personally, I am currently more interested in how viable it is to use ANSI on the login screen. Ideally, I'd like to display an ANSI-based login dialog. Although this is stated rhetorically, as the obvious answer to this problem is to just try as many of the telnet clients as possible and get it working.

A non-rhetorical question however, for someone like you who runs a MUD with players, can you detect what clients your players are using? If so, what are the most popular?

That's not a very good indicator of who is using what client for other muds, though.

In fact, it seems at various muds I played in the past that were popular most of the players on any given mud used the client that had the most community support for that specific game. For example, on one MUD I played a few years practically everyone used mudmaster console version.

I've discussed specific blind-friendly features here in the past, but as a general rule I'd suggest trying to play without ASCII graphics, colour or a prompt, see what things are difficult, and add alternatives. Blind mudders seem particularly fond of MSP, too, so if you can provide a soundpack that'll likely go down well.


Is there a reliable protocol to detect the client? From talking to my players, GMud, MUSHclient and tintin++ seem to dominate, with relatively few players using TinyFugue, zMUD, CMUD and VIPmud.


I'd agree with that. GMud is a very basic client, but I've offered it as a self-extracting zip for a few years and as a result quite a few people use it. MUSHclient also seems to have become much more popular since I added a link to it on the website and provided instructions for adding MSP to MUSHclient (I didn't give any instructions for zMUD as I don't have a copy, and couldn't find any players who did).

I think there can be one, but no-one has seen the need for it so far. For instance, you can detect Putty by sending "^E" and getting "PuTTY" in response. Windows Telnet sends four terminal types to the server, including VTNT. Mushclient sends one terminal type of "mushclient". Etc.

If I were to look further into and write up this sort of thing, do you think anyone would both to implement it in order to gain that information? Or to be able to make best use of the capabilities of each client, like with ANSI for me.

I request the terminal type and display the first one for informational purposes on our staff-only users command. It saves a step when helping players debug client issues and it's also useful for identifying blind players. Mainly though I use it to set configuration options for our web client.

Obviously you can't trust this information completely as clients like mushclient and zmud can be configured to send arbitrary terminal types.

One wonders if it would be useful to just ask the player for the name of their client, perhaps from a list of supported clients (with "guess for me" as an option). If you could motivate them with carrots like nifty extra support, the step sounds like it wouldn't be too onerous.

I like descriptions. No ASCII. No maps.

I've never played a MUD that used ASCII maps in which the room descriptions were anywhere near the quality they are on MUDs I'm used to playing, or even most random MUDs that don't use ASCII maps. I think it detracts from the immersion of the game and all takes away from the all around value of quality areas.

I can understand having them in MUDs of certain genres, but I tend to stick to plain old sword and sorcery Diku MUDs, and I'm not much for innovation I guess.

Same goes for TinTin++. One thing I need to add is for tt++ to report the actual terminal emulator (RXVT, XTERM, etc) on a 2nd TTYPE request, though I don't think there are any muds that poll multiple times and do something useful with it.